Mark Titus might be the only thing associated with Ohio State that I like. His writing is fantastic, and his intro to this article about basketball scouting is fantastic. The rest of the article is pretty good, too, but you really get a feel for his mindset with these paragraphs.

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I spent five days in Las Vegas by myself earlier this month. If that sounds like your idea of paradise, let me stop you right there, because you’re wrong. Even though I know nothing about you, I’m fairly certain that five days alone in Vegas is enough to make anybody rethink their life. Five days in Vegas with friends or family is still probably four days too many, but being alone in Vegas is like finding out halfway through a party that you were invited by mistake. Everyone is having the time of their lives around you, and even though you were excited when you arrived, you’re just off to the side wondering what you’re doing there. I’ve sat in countless putrid porta potties, I once shaved all my body hair just to see what it felt like, and I’ve watched more than 150 Chicago Cubs games in a single summer. Put all that together and you’re about halfway to understanding just how miserable five days alone in Vegas feels.

What makes it so bad is that after 10 minutes at a casino vacuums up most of your gambling fund, you’re left with nothing but time to kill and the paralyzing sense that you’re wasting way too much money. This is a problem, because anything that could be described as “fun” in Vegas likely costs buttloads of money. And because the average temperature in the desert in mid-July is hot enough to melt your skin, doing something outside is not an option.

So unless you’re a gambling addict or super rich, you likely end up sitting around and people-watching. Or you end up playing the penny slots at the Hooters Casino at noon on a Wednesday with chain-smoking 80-year-olds who look like they’re seconds away from leaning over and offering you all the cash they have if you’ll “please just help put me out of my misery.” Or you end up at a dive karaoke bar a few blocks off the Strip, where you spend the night trying to figure out what annoys you most: the warm beer, the standard-definition TV showing the History Channel, or the group of divorcées who have sung “Trashy Women” by Confederate Railroad four times in the last hour.